Indeed. I just like to bait you into expressing them anew when I need a chuckle to brighten my day. ;)

"But I have a rational solution. Those who think the land should not be developed should just buy it and keep farming it. Free market at its best."

You say rational, some, myself included, would call it ideological. If we continue to develop on prime agricultural land as our population grows, we will ultimately be importing the vast majority of our food. This is hardly a rational policy for any nation to follow, especially one blessed with as much fertile land as the US. The risk is obvious and could pose a major threat to our independence. But then I keep forgetting the market is always right.

"especially the stupid people who are too lazy to try and determine the facts for any issue they hop on to support"

It's a pretty complex field, Nick. I suspect a lot of folks, rightly worried about the implications of what the majority of climate scientists are tentatively concluding, tend to defer to those who spend their entire adult lives studying various aspects of climate change. To be sure, as the bell curve predicts, a certain percentage of the population is stupid, but there are a lot of other folks who are not stupid, including more than you might think who are at least as smart as you, who nonetheless do not possess the expertise to pass judgment. For a variety of reasons, like concern for their children, they choose to place their trust in science and so support policies based on that science. Why you seem to dismiss them all as stupid troubles me. Am I misreading you?

"You say rational, some, myself included, would call it ideological. If we continue to develop on prime agricultural land as our population grows, we will ultimately be importing the vast majority of our food. This is hardly a rational policy for any nation to follow, especially one blessed with as much fertile land as the US. The risk is obvious and could pose a major threat to our independence. But then I keep forgetting the market is always right."

--------

So then you are saying that government has the right to tell us how to use our property?

If we as individuals make poor decisions, we suffer the consequences. I much prefer to live by my own principles than that of some planner, politician, or bureaucrat. Russia tried it and failed miserably. If someone is worried about it, they can buy a farm and become self-sufficient. Just don't ask me to subsidize them.

"It's a pretty complex field, Nick. I suspect a lot of folks, rightly worried about the implications of what the majority of climate scientists are tentatively concluding, tend to defer to those who spend their entire adult lives studying various aspects of climate change."

Yes it is. Unfortunately too large a percentage get their beliefs and knowledge from Hollywood, social networks, Anderson Cooper, Wikipedia, the likes of Al Gore, and other ideologues. An amazing number of people have not read a single book since they left high school, and wouldn't even know where to begin to find information if they were willing to get out of in front of some reality TV or Oprah.

I'll let everyone in on a secret... the earth has been warming for millennium... a good portion of it was covered in ice while back. If we destroy ourselves, the earth will recover without us. We are probably not going to destroy ourselves by warming the earth with carbon pollution. We will do it with nuclear weapons.

"So then you are saying that government has the right to tell us how to use our property?"

They do it all the time. Do zoning codes ring a bell? Eminent domain? Restrictions on farm animals in urban areas? The list goes on. That principle is firmly established in our legal system for all sorts of things, many of them minor. If they are going to intervene at all, I would most certainly prefer that they intervene in a matter affecting the security of the country. Especially if we don't have the good sense to self regulate.

"Just don't ask me to subsidize them."

We're coming full circle to that argument we had pages ago. You want to live for yourself alone, albeit in an interconnected society where the efforts of others(sometimes subsidized) make your comfortable life possible. Others of us recognize that we have obligations to one another, including the less fortunate or less competent, if we are to survive as a free and yes, humane, society. There's nothing to be gained by getting into it again.

Nick says:I'll let everyone in on a secret... the earth has been warming for millennium... a good portion of it was covered in ice while back.

About 35 million years ago, the Earth's surface temperature was around 22C, 10 degrees higher than now, and had been for most of the 550 million years before that. Then, for an unknown reason, it dropped into an an era of ice ages like it has several times before. The average temperature of Earth's surface during the last 15 million years or so has fluctuated between about 5C and about 14C, where we are now.

But it has been cooling slowly for most of the current interglacial, which has lasted ~14 thousand years. Surface temperature reached a high point about 7,000 years ago and has wobbled down and back up since, descending on average. The current upwards wobble is just about on cue to peter out, and if the pattern of the past continues, it will soon be heading gently down again.

Having said that, no-one knows when the current era of ice ages will end. The current interglacial has already lasted longer then previous ones by several thousand years. So temperature might stay steady, or go down, or go up to 22C again eventually.

Although we have some idea of the causation of the interglacials within the current ice ages era, we still don't understand what causes ice age eras to begin and end, so nobody knows what will happen.

I posted this graph in my first comment on page 1 of this thread, and here we come full circle on page 100.

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The current Holocene interglacial in more detail: the last 11,000 years, after the Younger Dryas event:

"They do it all the time. Do zoning codes ring a bell? Eminent domain? Restrictions on farm animals in urban areas? The list goes on. That principle is firmly established in our legal system for all sorts of things, many of them minor. If they are going to intervene at all, I would most certainly prefer that they intervene in a matter affecting the security of the country. Especially if we don't have the good sense to self regulate."------And the list has and is being fought constantly by those who are trying to protect our rights. Regarding the security of the country as it applies to land use, who will decide what is best for all of us? Al Gore? Barack Obama? Rush Limbaugh? Rand Paul? Oprah? Michael Moore? Stephen Hawking? Charlie Sheen? Bill Gates? Tom Kirchner? Nick Gatel?

Who determines the best course for every single citizen... why it would be every single citizen.

I don't understand why people are so willing to give up their natural rights.

As with "climate change," there are those who want to impose their will on us, whether or not we agree. Some really want us stop driving anything with an internal combustion engine today. Some want us to provide universal this or that for everyone. And sometimes with worse consequences (ala my incandescent versus CFC rant a while back). Once we start taking away rights, it gets worse and worse.

Why are we concerned about universal health care? Perhaps we should attack the source of the problem... people don't take care of themselves. Why don't we limit what people eat and how much they eat? Everyone should get a ration card that only allows them to purchase one month of food, with a maximum of 2,000 calories per day. We should outlaw chocolate and wine, because they are bad if not consumed in moderation. Of course some government scientists will develop a computer model (maybe the same scientists who developed the global warming computer model) that 'proves' meat is bad for us. Then the government will have the proof they need to ban meat.

Some of the climate change people want this, they want to control the lives of every human and tell them what they can, or cannot do.

It looks like my friend Tim has cracked the Milankovitch cycles problem and made a giant stride in the climate jigsaw puzzle. This is exciting, cutting edge climate science!

What Tim has done that no-one else has tried is to filter the data to exclude the longer term variations in the eccentricity of Earth's orbit. His rational for doing this is that the total amount of Sunlight arriving at Earth's isn't affected by this. It had been previously thought that the changes to the northern hemisphere were crucial, due to higher landmass area relative to ocean area. So it looks like the cycle of primary importance is the change in axial tilt, which has a period of ~41,000 years. This cycle is driven primarily by the other planets (mainly Jupiter and Venus) and modulated (damped) by the Moon.

This graph covers a time span of 425,000 years and compares a temperature proxy for the Antarctic (deuterium levels in the Vostok ice cores which don't suffer diffusion problems) with changes in the total insolation (sunlight arriving at Earth's surface) at high latitudes (65N, 65S)

Bigger version here:http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/vmc-match-6.png

The Timings of these changes show that the amount of sunshine arriving at these latitudes changes before the changes in temperature. This is in contrast to changes in co2 which happen 800-2000 years afterwards. Once again, we are finding that it is solar system dynamics which drive Earth's climate, not trace gas quantities.

I drove out to Wyoming last weekend to spend some time in the Thunder Basin Grasslands - heaven on earth! At one point in Nebraska I could see one of the a coal train from WY passing next to a NE cattle feedlot. Yup, land use... ain't it wonderful. Big scale agriculture and mineral extraction drive the economies out here. Shocking that with all of that going on that the good people of NE are trying to keep the Keystone Pipeline out of the state. Camped out at Pumkin Butte, naturally high radioactivity from uranium right at the surface. Overall it was a nice trip but a bit smelly at times but then that wasn't manure it was the actually smell of tax money going into the states' coffers.

"And the list has and is being fought constantly by those who are trying to protect our rights."

A battle lost long ago, Nick. A modern day enactment of Don Quixote. Your version of rights ended up in the dust bin of history long ago, about the time of Hammurabi. That is the basic purpose of every legal system, you know, to put limits on people's ability to act totally as they see fit. The old way didn't work out so well, but it took a few 10's of thousands of years for us to figure that out. As societies have evolved in the direction of increasing complexity and population has increased exponentially, each individual's right to unfettered freedom of action has been increasingly constrained, partly out of necessity, and partly due to lack of self restraint.

"Regarding the security of the country as it applies to land use, who will decide what is best for all of us? Al Gore? Barack Obama? Rush Limbaugh? Rand Paul? Oprah? Michael Moore? Stephen Hawking? Charlie Sheen? Bill Gates? Tom Kirchner? Nick Gatel?"

More likely those the majority of those we choose to govern us, so I would surmise it to be some subset of the above list, along with millions of our fellow Americans. So far, the issue has not been decided to my liking but that is democracy, so I bite my lip and continue to tilt at my own private windmill. ;)

"Why are we concerned about universal health care?"

Because the health of the individual ultimately depends on the health of the group.Look at it this way, for example : As things stand, ~75% of all who volunteer for military service are rejected as unfit. If this trend continues, who will be left to protect us from all those foreigners who want to harm us? That is, IIRC, one of the few things you agree we should pay taxes for. Might it follow that universal health care would increase the pool of able volunteers for that vital government function and thus be worthy of government support?There are, of course, other reasons having to do with the viability of our society that justify universal health care, along with plain old compassion for one's fellow man, but I doubt they would resonate with you, so I won't waste our time by going into them.

"Some of the climate change people want this, they want to control the lives of every human and tell them what they can, or cannot do."

This is starting to sounds like some of those rants I hear about One World Government types flying around in black helicopters. I doubt even Rog, for all his disagreements with the accursed Warmista, would buy into this one.

Nick says: "Some of the climate change people want this, they want to control the lives of every human and tell them what they can, or cannot do."

This is starting to sounds like some of those rants I hear about One World Government types flying around in black helicopters. I doubt even Rog, for all his disagreements with the accursed Warmista, would buy into this one.

A couple of years ago, NASA launched a satellite carrying an instrument designed to resolve co2 emission down to 10m. The plan was, to use this to enforce taxation of all emitters, under cap and trade.

The rocketry did a loop de loop and the satellite is now measuring fish droppings at the bottom of the southern ocean.

How we cheered!

I live in the UK, the most surveilled place on earth. You can't walk down the street without being captured on camera. Your cellphone constantly tells where you are, who you talk to, etc. Your internet provider knows where you surf, what you buy, who you email, what your political views are... The state has access to these records, without the need for a court order. The bureaucrats love having the POWER to snoop and micromanage peoples lives and 'profile' them. After all, "they know best".

Global! Warming! Alarm! gives those who would love to extend this system worldwide the perfect excuse. What you drive, what you eat how much you breathe when exerting, how you heat your home, how you cool your home, how MUCH you heat or cool your home; all these will become subject to regulation, with penalties for using more than has been deemed appropriate by bureaucrats who live well paid and comfortable lives at our expense. To what purpose? The state knows from its scientists that reduction of human co2 emission will have virtually no effect whatsoever on the global average temperature. What it is really all about is making people feel they have to keep their heads down and do as they are told. It's about social control and political power over individual citizens.

Protest against this gross erosion of our liberty and intrusion into our lives will be tolerated, provided those protesting don't protest so hard that there's any danger they might actually change anything.

Think I'm a black helicopter nutcase?

I heard that in America, 9-11 has been used as an excuse to radically extend the powers of the security forces to enter homes, hold people without charge or access to a lawyer, and so on.

Tell me it ain't so, I've always looked to the american people to defend the right of the individual from arbitrary state interference.

But it's OK they tell us, these powers will only be used against 'terrorists'.

Jean Charles de Menezes family know all about it.

There are people out there who rank 'climate deniers' alongside 'terrorists', and they have managed to enter the corridors of power.

I may be over-reacting, but after years of abuse, accusations of malicious intent, insinuations about my mental state, threats and dirty tricks, it can be hard to work out who has the twisted perspective.

Here's a comment from someone on a website where I criticised a book called "Climate Change Denial: heads in the sand" recently.

56 “And once again, please DNFTT [Do not feed the troll] TB [TallBloke], you are only giving them an opportunity to further their nonsense. It is pointless trying to reason and argue with Dunning-Krugers and ideologues…pointless.”

Haydn and Cook have looked into the fascinating psychological underpinnings of the denialism and “skepticism” movement. The psychological aspect of those in denial or “skeptical” of AGW has been ignored for too long IMO.

What is also interesting (and at times amusing) is that those afflicted with these traits, are so oblivious to their plight (some might say deluded) that they feel compelled to come here and defend their ideology,

The person in question will twist, distort and misrepresent your position….

And here's a quote from the book itself:

“Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it is just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the prepondera­nce of evidence in science, the collective view.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).

John Cook and his acolytes have a lot to say about the mental state of people who have doubts about the IPCC view of climate change, making frequent reference to Dunning-Kruger, delusion and etc

It’s a scarily brief step from

“The professor is in denial” to “The professor is delusional” to “The professor would be better off keeping quiet” to “The professor has been removed to a mental institution for the good of himself and society”.

First they came for the professor…

Think "It can't happen here"?

We live in interesting times, when lessons of the dangers of fascism have been forgotten, and we cozily imagine it could never happen again. I'll just point out, at the risk of falling foul of Godwins Law, that the German National Socialist Party used folk tales about ecology and the preservation of 'nature' to underpin their despotism.

The Committee for Anti-Climatic Activities (CACA) is watching you, and has access to all your internet ramblings...

"The Committee for Anti-Climatic Activities (CACA) is watching you, and has access to all your internet ramblings..."

How true.The land, water and air have been legally converted into commodities to be sold off for profit. Worse yet: people have met the same fate, still worse is the commodification of ideas. Rog: you know all about this... profs paid to think "correctly", changing school curricula to teach up and coming scientists the approved ideas.It's all over, we've been sold off. I'll be off in the woods again this weekend pretending to enjoy freedom and liberty but I had better be careful not to get to close to the sites selected for rare earth mining here in SE Nebraska or I'll be enjoying my freedom from behind bars.

Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone, nine for the mortal men doomed to die, one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne, in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring the bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

- There will always be a Frodo and a Sam

P.S.

Don't worry, the dark choppers you hear but can not see are themselves being watched. And it goes like this: Paranoia, the destroyer.